I mentioned a while ago that I’ve started blocking traffic from a few places that were spamming me. I still get a couple of spams a day, but nothing like the hundreds I was getting before. Whenever I get more than one spam comment / trackback from the same address, I add them to the deny list. Something I noticed about the list:

What’s with all the 85.64.x.x entries? 60% of the IP addresses that spam me come from 85.64.x.x, which is odd. I wonder where that is. I googled around a bit, and there are several sites that will convert IP addresses into geographical locations, but they all want me to pay for and download software. Geeze. I don’t want to know that bad.

Here is another idle question: Why are IP addresses expressed in decimal and not hex? I can’t think of any reason to express them in base 10 as we do now. You don’t need to do math with these things. They are sort of like street addresses. You need them to be easy to remember. Changing them to base 16 would reduce the 12-digit number to 8 digits. In addition, the letters would make the thing more memorable. For example, which would you rather memorize: 204.15.134.196 or CC.F.86.C4? I suggest that the latter is a little more handy.

Thanks to both of you. I was considering a ban on all of 85.64, but that seems pretty extreme. I think I’d rather play whack-a-mole with these spammers as opposed to blocking an entire Israeli telecom.

Always begin with ARIN, the American Registry for Internet Numbers. They’re the authority which grants blocks of IPs to others. Some large blocks have been granted to regional authorities like RIPE (Europe), APNIC (Asia Pacific), LACNIC (Latin America), JAPNIC (Japan), and AFRINIC (Africa). If you need to consult one of those, ARIN will tell you.

For instance, ARIN says that 85.64.93.115 is assigned to RIPE. RIPE says “Barak I.T.C.” in Israel.

Why are IPs entered in decimal? So you can enter them with a ten-key pad — or so that you could, back in 1970 when all this was being created initially. Sure, hex would make more sense, but that’s not how they did it.

oddly, IP addresses are only submittable to DNS machines in binary, the decimal is only for convenience. But it’s what you get when you combine the defense department and academidia: that is, the worst of both worlds.